With the explosion in Internet access and usage individuals have discovered that they may now receive a large amount of information in their homes and offices almost immediately from any number of sources. These sources include everything from the latest news, weather, and sports to stocks, bond and commodity prices. Currently, a typical Internet user would have a browser installed in his local computer or server such as Internet Explorer™ or Netscape™. Using this browser, the user would access an Internet service provider (ISP), such as America-On-Line (AOL™), via a modem over the local public switched telephone network (PSTN). Once logged onto the Internet server, the user may utilize one of the many search engines, such as Yahoo™ or Lycos™, to specify search terms. The user may also use a web crawler, spider or robot to attempt to find a product, service or information desired. The search engine or web crawler would then respond with a list of web sites which matched the search terms the user provided. The user would then log onto a web site and view the products or services available for sale or receive the information desired. Further, if the user discovers a web site he prefers, the user may store the universal resource locator (URL) in a favorites' directory for later quick access. This storage of the URL in a favorites directory is often referred to as bookmarking the entry and the entry is then referred to as a bookmark. In addition to bookmarks, the browser may keep in a history of the web pages visited by storing each URL accessed. Thereafter, the user may revisit the web page by accessing the favorites directory and searching for a title for the web page associated with a URL. However, once some number of bookmarks has been accumulated, the user may find it difficult to identify the bookmark desired based on the title alone. Further, in some instances the designers of the web page may not necessarily create a title for a web page as in the case of purely graphic web pages. Therefore, the user may be forced to try and recognize the bookmark using solely the URL. The user under the circumstances would find it frustrating to look through a large number of bookmarks by title and URL to identify the web page desired. In addition, the user may often are need to access several web pages before discovering the bookmark associated with the desired web page. This also applies to the history file. A user or system administrator would often have to access the web site to determine the nature of the content therein.
To overcome this problem of inadequate description of bookmarks Nielsen in U.S. Pat. No. 5,963,964, issued on Oct. 5, 1999, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference, proposes substituting a thumbnail snapshot of the web page itself for the title or the URL used as a bookmark. However, in the case of a history file, it is still necessary to open the file and access the history by time period.
Therefore, what is needed are a system and method in which a history of web pages accessed may be organized for presentation as web pages so that they may be easily discovered and accessed by a user. The system and method should further present to the user the history of web page access as thumbnail snapshots. Further, this system and method should display these thumbnail snapshots to the user in such a fashion that the user may identify the web page of interest and access it quickly.